Instant Art

Making these unique framed art pieces for your home is part craft project and part science

experiment. You won’t believe what you can create with your ordinary home printer.

Note: The ink in most home printers is not colorfast. That won’t affect your artwork but if you wash the fabric, the ink will run.

Supplies You'll Need:

• Fabric (we used a thick canvas, but a lighter-weight fabric would also work)

• Freezer paper

• Scissors

• Computer printer (any home office printer will work)

• Picture frame

• Iron

Instructions:

1. Find an image you would like to turn into artwork. You can find thousands of free images online — try thegraphicsfairy.com. Look for illustrations; line drawings with thicker strokes print well.

2. Choose a frame for your future art. Remember that most home printers print on 8.5-by-11-inch paper and usually leave at least a ¼-inch border, so you should look for a frame that is 8-by-10 inches or smaller.

3. Cut out the fabric and freezer paper. Cut your fabric into 8.5-by-11-inch pieces. Then cut your freezer paper to the same size. (Freezer paper is sold in the same section of the grocery store as wax paper and tin foil.)

4. Iron the freezer paper to the fabric. Place the good side of your fabric face-down on an ironing board. Put the plastic side of the freezer paper down on top of the fabric. Run the heated iron over the paper until it adheres to the fabric. Use the cotton setting on the iron, and it will only take a few seconds.

5. Resize your images. Open up the images you have found on your computer and resize them to fit your frames. If you don’t have an image-editing program, you can use a free

online tool, such as picresize.com.

6. Print your images. Do a test run with plain paper to make sure you know which side of the fabric your printer will print on (some printers flip the sheet over during printing). When you are ready to create your artwork, carefully load the sheet of fabric. You might want to help guide the sheet in when it begins printing.

7. Remove the freezer paper from the fabric. Cut out the artwork and put it in the frame. You can use the glass that comes with the frame or take it out, depending on what kind of look you are going for.

Now just find a place on your wall to display your creation!

Karen Guard is the blogger behind Darling Octopus (darlingoctopus.com). In each issue, she tackles a new do-it-yourself project for R•Home.